ritual in sita sings the blues

Notes on Ritual: Sita Sings the Blues

William L. Benzon

Introduction...........................................................................................................................................................2 The Agni Pariksha in Context ............................................................................................................................3

Four Main Styles............................................................................................................................................3 After the Agni Pariksha................................................................................................................................6 Toward a Common Humanity....................................................................................................................7

Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 1 ..................................................................................................................8 Ritual Patterns................................................................................................................................................8 Bounded by Ritual.........................................................................................................................................8 Across Space and Time ............................................................................................................................. 11 Next Time: The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.......................................................................... 13

Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 2A............................................................................................................ 14 Nina’s Tale................................................................................................................................................... 14 Sita’s Tale ..................................................................................................................................................... 16

Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 2B ............................................................................................................ 17 Sita’s Lost, then Found.............................................................................................................................. 17 Sita Ditches Rama ...................................................................................................................................... 19 Sita and Nina............................................................................................................................................... 20 Next Time ................................................................................................................................................... 22

Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 3 – Shakespearean Resonance ............................................................ 23 Multiple Plots.............................................................................................................................................. 23 Verbal and Visual Style.............................................................................................................................. 24 One for the Price of Two ......................................................................................................................... 26 References ................................................................................................................................................... 27

Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 4 – The whole Cosmos........................................................................ 28 Cosmology................................................................................................................................................... 28 Lotsa Stuff ................................................................................................................................................... 28 Plenitude ...................................................................................................................................................... 31

From Elizabeth to Nina: Stick to Your Guns, Baby.................................................................................... 36

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INTRODUCTION When I first set out to write about Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues, I didn’t intend to write so much. But once I was in it, I was in it. Judging from the titles, I originally set out to do two essays, one on the Agni Pariksa episode, and the other on ritual in the film. The Agni Pariksha episode, of course, is ritual. So that’s two episodes on ritual. The last piece, From Elizabeth to Nina: Stick to Your Guns, Baby, is different in kind from the rest. The others are about the film. This one is about Paley herself, and is directed at all those people who pester her about getting married and having children. While Paley is living in the 21st century, apparently many people feel they have the right to give her advice out of the 19th. So I decided to dig a bit deeper into history and come up with advice out of the 16th century, Elizabethan England. All of these pieces are online at New Savanna. They’re listed here along with links to them: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/p/sita-chronicles.html

THE AGNI PARIKSHA IN CONTEXT Over at the National Humanities Center I’ve discussed the Agni Pariksha segment1 of Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues. I want to put that segment in context, both in terms of the visual styles Paley developed for the film, and its place in the story. As you may know, the story sets up a parallel between and incident in the life of Nina Paley, a cartoonist depicted in the film as, well, Nina, and the story of Rama and Sita in the Ramayana. Paley’s husband dumped her while she was on a business trip in New York City. It is that event, and its emotional aftermath, that is set in parallel with Rama’s decision to discard his wife, Sita, for the sake of public appearances: It just wouldn’t do for a monarch to keep his wife after she’d slept in another man’s house, even if that man had abducted her and she’d remained faithful. The whole film is roughly 82 minutes long, including the opening titles and credits and the end credits. Paley runs the two stories in parallel up to the intermission, at roughly 48 minutes into the film, which is a bit over half-way through and uses four distinct visual styles (see next section). The Agni Pariksha segment is three minutes long, running from 51:40 to 54:40, and is in a different visual style. After the Agni Pariksha, things change. Here’s what Paley said in her proposal to the Guggenheim Foundation:

My goal is to set up styles, sounds, and stories that contrast initially, but merge, or at least interrelate, by the end. As the boundaries between my story and Sita's dissolve over the course of the film, so shall the distinctions between the visual styles and techniques I've established. For example, the flat cartoony musical "Sita" may saunter into same frame as a rough animated journal sketch. Sound will reinforce this merging, as Annette Hanshaw jazz creeps into Indian Classical music and vice-versa.

While things didn’t quite work out as Paley had envisioned them (personal communication), that’s more or less what happened, and the Agni Pariksha sequence is the film’s turning point.

Four Main Styles Let’s look at the four styles, starting what I’ll call Cartoon Main. This seems to be the overall dominant style, though I haven’t counted up the minutes. It opens and closes the film and is used for each of the Annette Hanshaw recordings. As Paley says in her Guggenheim proposal, it is very “cartoony,” with rounded forms, large heads and eyes, and flat color in a vibrant palette. Here’s an example:

1 http://onthehuman.org/2010/07/cultural-evolution-a-vehicle-for-cooperative-interaction-between-the-sciences-and-the-humanities/

Paley uses the Personal-Real style for events in her own life. It is “highly personal” and is “based on rough journal sketches and photographs I took in India.”

Much of the story is told through use of paintings which Paley modeled on Indian Miniatures. The animation in these segments is deliberately minimal. Character’s bodies are kept rigid and moved over the background in the manner of a child playing with paper cut-outs.

Paley developed a highly Eclectic Style through which she presented commentary by a chorus of three interlocutors in conversation with one another. Each is represented by an Indonesian shadow puppet. As they converse, the people, places, and things they’re talking about are represented on screen by a wide variety of collaged images.

After the Agni Pariksha The Agni Pariksha – purification by fire – comes after the intermission, which is in the Cartoon Main style, but not immediately afterward. First we have the scene where Nina gets an email from her husband informing her that he wants a divorce. That scene, of course, is in the Personal-Real style. As Nina screams, we segue to the Agni Pariksha, establishing an identity between Nina and Sita. Nina’s life has now come crashing into the events of the Ramayana. As identities co-mingle, so do previously separate visual styles. I’ll give two examples of this. Look at this screen shot:

We’ve got an Indian miniature scene on the right, and an Indonesian shadow puppet on the left; notice that the puppet’s hand crosses the midline into the Indian miniature. The Ramayana is well-known in Indonesia, as it is throughout Southeast Asia, though in many different versions. A more elaborate example occurs in a sequence running from 65:00 to 66:29. In this sequence Sita’s two sons are singing a song in praise of their father, Rama, who doesn’t even know they exist. They’re living in the forest with Sita and being tutored by Valmiki (who would go on to write the oldest existing Ramayana text). The song has two kinds of verses. One kind is conventional praise – “Rama’s great, Rama’s good, Rama does what Rama should” – and the other is satirical – “Sing his love, sing his praise, Rama set his wife ablaze...” The song opens and ends with the “straight” verses, with the satirical one’s sandwiched in between. The straight verses are realized in the Indian Miniature style, while the satirical verses are realized in the Cartoon Main style. This is the only point in the film where we have that style without Sita. These are not the only places where Paley uses stylistic blending after the Agni Pariksha. Some are relatively unobtrusive, such as an interlocutor’s voice on the soundtrack along with visuals in the Indian Miniature style, while there is a relatively major example closer to the end. Sita vows to return to Mother Earth, which is

represented in the Cartoon Main style. This is the first, and only, time Sita has spoken from within that style. Every other time she’s appeared in that style she does so to sing an Annett Hanshaw vocal – which she does later in the scene.

Toward a Common Humanity My purpose here, as in my various posts about Disney’s Fantasia, is primarily to describe what happens on screen. If we want to know how movies work on and through their audience, we must know how they are constructed. If we don’t know that, it’s not clear how we can know much of anything else. In the case of Sita Sings the Blues, Nina Paley set out to to establish a parallel between the life of a contemporary person living in one culture and the lives of divinities from another culture as depicted in an ancient text from that culture. The different visual styles state and reinforce cultural differences. Once the lives of her characters have collided in the Agni Parishka, however, Paley begins to break-down those cultural differences. She blends previously disparate visual styles. In so doing she makes a statement about common humanity in an immediate and visceral way that is quite different from abstract arguments about human nature. Whatever the force and validity of those abstract arguments, they have little chance of influencing the lives of peoples across the globe unless they are made emotionally real though art such as that Paley has generously and skillfully deployed in Sita Sings the Blues.

RITUAL IN SITA SINGS THE BLUES, PART 1 I want to discuss ritual patterns in Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues. Specifically, I want to look at the beginning and ending of the film, the beginning and ending of the Agni Pariksha sequence, and the parallel progression of Sita and Nina through the film. But first I need to define what I mean by ritual pattern. Then we can return to the movies.

Ritual Patterns The patterns I have in mind are an abstraction from structures anthropologists have found in rituals around the world. Here’s how I characterized that structure in my essay on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (downloadable PDF):

In “Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time” Edmund Leach has described the ritual structure of Durkheim's “states of the moral person.” They are: 1) secular life, 2) separation from the secular world and transition to 3) the marginal state where the ‘moral person’ is in a world discontinuous from the ordinary world, often being regarded as being dead, and from which a return to the secular is made by a process of 4) aggregation or desacralization, often symbolized by rebirth. Arnold van Gennep talks of separation, transition, and incorporation in The Rites of Passage. The ritual sequence involves two realms of being, the secular and the sacred, and is designed to order the transition of initiates between these two realms.

As a simple example, consider the bride’s role in the now standard Christian wedding ceremony, a ceremony in which she will loose the surname she was born with and assume her husband’s surname, thereby changing her social identity. She enters the church with a veil over her face. She is thus faceless; symbolically, she has no social identity and is now separated from the secular world. Accompanied by her father, she walks to the altar where she is met by the groom; she is in a transitional state. She and the groom exchange vows and the officiate pronounces them to be married. Now that she has her new social identity, and a new name, the veil can be lifted and the new woman can be incorporated into society in that new identity. This ritual is a relatively short, but anthropologists have recorded rituals that last for hours and days and even longer. Adolescent initial rites, for example, can last for months. There is an initial rite of separation where the young men, shall we say, are stripped on their ordinary identity. They may have to wear special dress and have special markings on their bodies. They may be given a different name as well. Once they have thus been separated from society, they’ll go live in some other place reserved for them and they’ll be taught things needful to be an adult man in their society. This process can easily last several months and may involve arduous physical tasks or a vision quest. During this period their friends and family may well treat them as being dead, which they are, socially. They are in transition, without an identity in their society. Once the proper things have been done another ceremony will be performed and the young men will be given new names, perhaps new body make-up, and will be incorporated into society as adults. What’s important about the ritual pattern is not how elaborate it is, or how long it takes for the full ritual to run to completion. What’s important is the pattern itself: separation, transition, and incorporation. That’s the pattern we’re going to look for in Sita Sings the Blues.

Bounded by Ritual First of all, we could see the experience of watching Sita Sings the Blues as itself a ritual experience, especially if

one sees it in a theatre, preferably an old-time movie palace. Here you go to a building purpose built for movie watching, and you meet other people there who have come for the same thing you did: to watch Sita Sings the Blues. Once you’ve entered the building you’ve separated yourself from the mundane world and begun the transition to the magical world of Movieland. First you buy your ticket (that is, make an offering to the gods); then, perhaps, you buy some popcorn and a soda, whatever. You may hang out in the lobby a bit while chatting with your friends, whatever. But, when the time comes, you enter the theatre proper, take a seat, and watch the movie. You are now in a transition zone; your mind has withdrawn its attention from the mundane world and is given over to consuming the flickering images on the screen and the sounds coming from the speakers. This goes on for 90, 100, 120 minutes or more, and then you exit the theatre and become, once again, incorporated into mundane life. If the movie was a good one, you will be in a different mood from when you went in; you will have been transformed, if only for a few hours. That, of course, is general to all movies, not just Sita Sings the Blues. Likewise, all movies have title credits and end credits that bracket the movie proper, and one might think of them as rites of separation and incorporation. And so we have a ritual structure (title credits, film, end credits) within another ritual structure (lobby experience, theatre proper, lobby experience). Sita Sings the Blues has one more layer of embedded ritual.

Starting at about 1:53 and running to 5:15 Paley presents us with a brief cosmology that starts with a cosmic explosion that gives way to a procession of Hindu deities, a beating heart, and finally, a heliocentric solar system. The (virtual) camera zooms in on earth and, ZIP! we’re in San Francisco, it’s night, and Nina and Dave are sleeping. That sequence lasted 202 seconds, and nothing that happened in it is necessary to the story told in the film. If you miss that sequence, there’s nothing in the subsequent story that will puzzle you. Why then, is it there? Let’s skip to the end. Starting at roughly 77:32 and running about a minute to 78:31, Paley reprises that opening cosmology very briefly. There’s no explosion, and the procession of deities has been all but

eliminated. But there is a tableau that was also in the opening sequence; one deity rubbing the leg of another deity, recumbent. In the opening sequence Shiva (male) is the recumbent deity and Lakshmi (female) is ministering to his comfort. That, Paley tells us on the director’s commentary, is a traditional Hindu tableau.

When Paley reprises the tableau at the end, the roles are reversed; Shiva ministers to Lakshmi’s comfort.

In a matter that is absolutely crucial to the narrative, the relationship between men and women, the

concluding sequence reverses the opening one. These two sequences frame the main narrative. The first is like a rite of separation in that it brings us from the mundane world to the magical world of the narrative proper while the second is like a rite of incorporation in that it brings back from the magical world to the mundane world. Most narratives, however, are not framed by cosmologies; in this respect Sita Sings the Blues is special. I suggest that Paley needed this framing in order to make the main narrative(s) work. It is not that she puts her own story in parallel with Sita’s but that the two stories, in some sense, become one story during the Agni Pariksha episode. Paley needs the cosmic context to allow for that confluence and convergence.

Across Space and Time That confluence and convergence happens in the Agni Pariksha episode. The Agni Pariksha – purification by fire – is an incident from Sita’s story. But Paley introduces it through Nina’s story. Nina learns that her husband wants to divorce her, she screams in anguish and – WHAM! – we’re into the Agni Pariksha, with Sita front and center. She lights a match, drops it, and thereby lights the fire that consumes but doesn’t consume her; it transforms her. That, I suggest, is a rite of separation. And it is paralleled by a reversing rite of incorporation, when Sita blows the match out at the end of the Agni Parkisha. Note also that, after Sita lights the fire, we see the cosmic flame/explosion that had opened the initial cosmological sequence; in parallel fashion it reappears just before Sita blows the match out. Thus:

match+ flame . . . flame match- Between the separation and incorporation Sita dances in a region that seems outside space. The images on the screen imply some kind of space, but it is not a well-defined three dimensional space. Things happen and move, but nothing goes anywhere in particular. Most importantly, those gods that appear in the opening and closing cosmologies, they reappear in this sequence. Starting at roughly 53:13 and running to roughly 53:20 those deities cycle through the sequence:

From 53:20 to 53:32 Sita is on the left and the deities are on the right. She is seeing them (Paley told me in an interview):

Finally, in a sequence that runs from 54:03 to 54:23 Sita and the deities merge:

And then they disappear. Entirely. The next thing we see is the cosmic fire that signals that the sequence is about to close. Once Sita has blown out the match the Agni Pariksha comes to end. And when it does, where do we go next? Do we go back to New York City and Nina’s story, where we were before the sequence began? No. We go back to the Sita story in ancient India. The two stories, thus, have become one, reaching through historical time and geographic space in the out-of-time-out-of-space zone of the Agni Pariksha.

Next Time: The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told Now all we have to do is situate these two stories, that of Nina and that of Sita, within the narrative space bounded by the “outer” ritual of the cosmologies and the “inner” ritual of the Agni Pariksha. I will do that in a second post (I’ve got other matters to attend to in real life, and so must remove myself from cyberspace). Things to think about: How is it that Nina becomes separated from her ongoing life? When does that happen & what is it that defines this separation? Correlatively, how is it that she returns to the world? Of course, we must ask the same questions about Sita. Note also that in the last part of the film, after the Agni Pariksha, Sita becomes a mother. Nina doesn’t. Does something happen in her life, however, that might parallel Sita’s motherhood. I’ll give you a hint: What’s Nina reading in her last scene?

RITUAL IN SITA SINGS THE BLUES, PART 2A In my previous discussion of ritual patterning in Sita Sings the Blues I discussed the anthropological concept of ritual and showed how film-going itself can be analyzed as a ritual. I then showed how Sita Sings the Blues uses that pattern in the large, to establish a cosmological context for the core narratives of Sita and Nian, and in the small, the Agni Pariksha, to blend the core narratives together. Now it’s time to look at those core narratives. Let’s start with the Nina narrative.

Ninaʼs Tale

When the opening cosmology ends, we find ourselves in San Francisco, in the bedroom with Nina, Dave, and their cat, Lexi (roughly 5:15 to 6:30). Lexi wakes them, Nina troops to the kitchen, puts food in Lexi’s bowl, and comes back to bed, jumps enthusiastically in, cuddles with Dave, and they do to sleep with smiles on their faces and Lexi atop the blanket. Then Dave gets a job in India (6:30 - 6:58). Then Dave leaves for India; hugs and kisses at the airport (14:32 – 15:01). When you take these scenes together with the other Nina and Dave and Nina-only segments it is clear that, when Dave leaves for India, Nina’s rite of separation has begun. We assume that, while he’s away, she continues doing whatever it was when he was with her, but we don’t see that at all. It’s clear that Dave is the center of her world; her relationship with him is what anchors her to society. In their next scene (24:30 – 25:36), Dave calls Nina from India to tell her that his contract has been extended. She fears that their relationship is falling apart and, in response, Dave suggests that she come to India. Which she does (31:32 – 32:00). When she arrives, Dave is cold toward her at the airport. What is worse, that night Nina arrays herself in her most seductive lingerie, and Dave simply roles over and goes to sleep. Nina is devastated (36:09 – 37:21).

In their final scene before the intermission, Nina gets an offer to come to New York City on business – five days, all expenses paid. Dave urges her to take the offer (43:29 – 44:19). Immediately after intermission, Nina is dumped by Dave (50:56 - 51:40). That completes her rite of separation. She is now in the transition phase, which begins with the Agni Pariksha. Nina has three more

scenes before the film ends. In the first of these she’s in a cold, bug infested apartment that leaks water (60:20 - 61:13). In the next she calls Dave and asks him to take her back (66:29 – 67:02). Finally we see her in a different apartment (76:13 – 77:11). Framed pictures on the walls depict the shadow puppets that have been narrating and commenting throughout the film. There’s a moment where she’s working at her computer and rubbing the belly of a new cat. Finally, we see her in bed, cat cradled in her arm, and reading Valmiki’s Ramayana. She appears to be content with her life. And so we may say that that last scene functions as a rite of incorporation. Under what terms? If she’d organized her identity around her husband, and he’s left her, and she doesn’t have a new husband or even a boyfriend, then why say that she has become reintegrated into society? There is an answer to that, and a fairly obvious one, but I’d like to pose another question: What happened that she went from begging Dave to taking her back to being content with her new kitty and a book? Was it magic? Yes. But no. To understand what happened we need to consider the other core narrative, Sita’s.

Sitaʼs Tale Whereas Nina’s story is a relatively simple one, presented in a straightforward manner, and in a single visual style, Sita’s story is complex, a bit convoluted, and is presented in three visual styles, one of them featuring three narrators and commentators who both tells us what happens and comment on the action. Because of this complexity, I won’t run through her story event by event as I did Nina’s – though I may do so at a later time. Nor will I run through it now, in this post. Real life calls, got things to do. This’ll have to wait a bit. Sorry.

RITUAL IN SITA SINGS THE BLUES, PART 2B In my immediately preceding discussion of ritual patterning in Sita Sings the Blues I considered the Nina’s story up to the very end where “we see her in bed, cat cradled in her arm, and reading Valmiki’s Ramayana. She appears to be content with her life. And so we may say that that last scene functions as a rite of incorporation.” And that led to a series of questions:

Under what terms? If she’d organized her identity around her husband, and he’s left her, and she doesn’t have a new husband or even a boyfriend, then why say that she has become reintegrated into society? There is an answer to that, and a fairly obvious one, but I’d like to pose another question: What happened that she went from begging Dave to taking her back to being content with her new kitty and a book?

It’s now time to take up Sita’s tale. Not only is it more complex than Nina’s tale – more complex in that it involves more actors in more episodes over a longer period of time – it is presented in a more complex manner. Paley presented Nina’s tale in a single visual style while she presents Sita’s tale through three visual styles, one of them featuring three narrators and commentators who both tell us what happens and comment on the action. Another visual style, a classically “cartoony” one, is used for the Annette Hanshaw songs, and the other is based on Indian miniatures. Because of this complexity, I won’t run through her story event by event as I did Nina’s – though I may do so at a later time.

Sitaʼs Lost, then Found Sita is married to Rama, heir apparent in the kingdom of Ayodhya. As a result of a promise his father had made to one of his wives, Rama is sent into exile for 14 years and Sita, the ever-dutiful wife, insists upon accompanying him. While in exile, Sita is abducted by Ravana and taken to his kingdom, Lanka. Though he wants to bed her, Sita refuses, and he, scholar and gentleman that he is, doesn’t force himself on her. With the help of Hanuman, the monkey king, Rama rescues Sita and returns with her to . . . just where is not exactly clear to me. Wherever it is, what Sita had hoped would be a happy reunion is not. Rama is cold toward her. And Paley places this cold reunion (37:21 – 39:06) immediately after Dave’s rejection of his Nina’s charms (36:09 – 37:21), with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet sawing away on the soundtrack. In response to Rama’s unexpected and inexplicable rejection, Sita asks that a funeral pyre be built. And so Sita immolates herself to the tune of “Mean to Me,” sung by Annette Hanshaw (39:38 – 42:53).

She survives the flames unharmed, meaning that she is indeed pure, but Rama remains unconvinced. Nonetheless, he takes her back to Ayodhya with him by some means of air transport (which is much discussed by the commentators, 44:19 – 45:03), as his 14 years of exile have come to a close.

That’s where Sita’s tale stands when the film goes into intermission (47:55 – 50:56), followed by Sita’s being dumped (50:56 – 51:40), which is then followed by the Agni Pariksha segment (51:40 – 54:40).

Whoa whoa whoa! Didn’t you just say that Sita underwent trial by fire as Hanshaw sang “Mean to Me”? Yes, I did. And she did. That episode is depicted twice in the film. The first time it’s presented in the context of the Sita story and in the cartoony style. More than any other style in the film, that one is based on clean clear lines and solid areas of highly saturated color. The second time Paley presents the Agni Pariksha she does so in the context of Nina’s story, placing it, as we have seen, immediately after Nina’s husband had dumped her. This time through it is in a style that differentiates it from all other segments of the film and draws the viewer into something of a ritual experience within the ritual-like experience of the film itself. It is thus not something from which we as viewers are distant, as we are from the first depiction in the cartoony style. This time it is not only happening to Nina, but to us as well, transforming our relationship to the story and the characters in it.

Sita Ditches Rama When we leave the Agni Pariksha, we’re in Sita’s world in ancient India. Stylistically, the world of Indian miniatures. Sita informs Rama that she’s pregnant. Then the three commentators chime in with brief remarks about “the mile-high club” (recall than Rama and Sita had traveled to Ayodhya by air) and speculation about who had impregnated her. Then we see, and hear, a woman being beaten.

In the course of beating his wife as punishment for her infidelity, a local laundry man remarks, “I'm not like Rama, who would take a woman who's slept in another man's house!” Rama’s treatment of Sita is thus glossed as the concern of a prudent ruler over his reputation. Whether we like it or not, it is a plausible account of his decision to banish her. And so a pregnant Sita is banished to the forest. Once again she lacks a social identity. While in the forest she meets the sage and teacher, Valmiki, and tells him her story, which he takes down and, in due time, compiles it into the Ramayana. Long before that, however, Sita gives birth to twin boys and Valmiki helps to educate

them. In time Rama discovers them, sends his sons back to the palace, and declares that Sita must once again prove her purity (71:08 – 71:47). Sita’s response is quite surprising: “I shall prove my purity to you. If I have always been true to Rama, if I have never thought of another man, if I am completely pure in body and soul, then, may Mother Earth take me back into her womb!” That is, she has framed this test of purity as one where success will free her from Rama and the impossible demands of his kingship rather than make her eligible to continue playing a role in his life-story. The test succeeds on Sita’s terms and she is taken back into the earth.

And that’s the end of Sita’s story. The next scene in the film is the last one, which ends with Nina in bed and reading the Ramayana.

Sita and Nina Let’s return to the question that I posed in the previous post: “What happened that [Nina] went from begging Dave to take her back to being content with her new kitty and a book?” Well, what happened in the film was that, first, there was a most interesting conversation among the three commentators.

Male Commentator:

If you had a girlfriend who was being treated really badly, by like her ex or her current boyfriend, or whatever. And she kept saying, ‘No, every day I'm gonna make sure I cook for him and send him a hot lunch at noon.’ Aren't you going to be like, ‘Listen he doesn't like you and talk to you. You've got to move on. Something's wrong.’ OK?

Male Commentator continues:

Sita's doing this pooja every day... I mean, I feel, I feel... Like this whole ‘good’ and ‘bad’ thing? That we always want people to be either all good or all bad? I think Sita also has her own issues. Like she didn't go back with Hanuman which would have saved hundreds of thousands of people from being killed.

The female commenter speaks up for Sita, pleading unconditional love. To which the male commenter responds:

This is the part of the female perspective I disagree with. Because it's like then you can say, "oh, she loves him so she did this" You know it's like, yeah but she shouldn't love someone who doesn't treat her right. OK? That's her mistake.

While they were commenting about Sita, Paley surely means us to hear them as relevant to Nina as well. After all, this discussion was placed after Nina begged Dave to take her back and the first comment was made with Nina’s image on the screen. Thus we are to believe that Nina herself had some undefined responsibility for the situation in which she found herself. The fact that Nina choose not to enter into another love relationship suggests that she had come to terms with that aspect of herself, whatever it was. After the commentators we have Sita singing an Annette Hanshaw song, “Lover Come Back to Me,” which grieves for a love that isn’t coming back. At this point, then, Sita is emotionally quit of Rama and, by implication, Nina is quit of Dave. When Rama orders Sita to prove her purity, which would allow her to return to him, she refuses and, instead, returns to the earth. And Nina takes to reading the Ramayana, written by the man to whom Sita told her story and who helped educate her children. Now Nina will retell Sita’s story to us as Sita once told it to Valmiki. That is her new identity, as an artist, a singer of songs, a teller of tales. That is how she chooses to become incorporated, once again, into society.

Next Time This does not finish our discussion of ritual in Sita Sings the Blues. Indeed, in this post, the topic seems to have been dropped rather than resolved. Nor am I sure that I can resolve it in another post. But I do want to take up two topics: 1) a comparison between Paley’s use of multiple plots in Sita and Shakespeare’s use of multiple plots in Much Ado About Nothing, and 2) the overall effect of interweaving cosmological ritual with mundane narrative. ‘Till next time.

RITUAL IN SITA SINGS THE BLUES, PART 3 – SHAKESPEAREAN RESONANCE It is high time I concluded my investigation into ritual patterning in Sita Sings the Blues.* But alas, that is not to be. Once I plunged into it, the Shakespeare connection has proven to be too rich to be given only the first half of a post, where the other half was to be a return to cosmology and such. So, that’s what we’ve got here, just Shakespeare and Paley. Cosmology will have to wait.

Multiple Plots Much Ado About Nothing, like all of Shakespeare’s comedies, and Elizabethan comedy in general, is multiply plotted. We have two couples, Claudio and Hero, Beatrice and Benedick, who become engaged, though it takes a bit of work to pull it off. The play gets its dramatic shape from the Claudio-Hero plot, so let’s start there. Claudio has returned from war (along with his friend, Benedick); he sees Hero and decides that she’s the woman he wants to marry. He asks his company commander, Don Pedro, to speak with Hero’s father, Leonato, to arrange a marriage. And so it is done, though not without a hitch or two. Meanwhile, Don Pedro’s misanthropic and bastard brother, Don John, does not at all like the outbreak of happiness that is likely to follow upon this wedding. So he schemes to stop it. He arranges for Claudio to witness a tableau in which he thinks that Hero is having an assignation with another man. Thus it comes about that, when all are gathered in the chapel for the big wedding, Claudio himself has different ideas. When he arrives he denounces her as a whore.

The frame grab is from Sita, but the issue, woman’s purity, is as old as the hills. Not only is the wedding called off, but in the ensuing anger and confusion, Hero faints. She is presumed dead

by most of those present, who leave the scene before she revives. Those who remain determine to preserve the appearance of her death so as to watch and see what happens. Perhaps things aren’t as they seem – are they ever? What happens, of course, is that everything gets worked out and we have a happy ending; Claudio and Hero become engaged once again, and so do Beatrice and Benedick. The first thing to note is that this botched wedding has become, in effect, a rite of separation (as I explained in the first post in this series [1]). Hero is socially dead – and presumed physically dead as well. This event takes place at the opening of Act Four (of five). That is to say, it happens a bit after the mid-point of the play. Thus it takes place at the same relative point in the play’s action as the point where Dave dumps Nina, 51 minutes into a 78 minute film (not counting the end credits). In both cases we, the audience, saw the break coming. In Much Ado we saw Don John’s plot; in Sita we could see that Dave had lost interest in Nina – she saw it too, but didn’t want to draw the logical conclusion, not until the fateful email hit her over the head with it. The endings, of course, are different. Hero becomes reconciled to her man and so will re-enter society as his wife. Nina does not become reconciled to Dave, nor does she find another man. She finds the Ramayana and makes a film. That’s a very different kind of ending for a romantic comedy and reflects, among other things, 400 years of history between Shakespeare’s play and Paley’s movie. My first point, then, is simply about relative timing. In both cases the woman goes into social exile at roughly the same time in the action – presumably this reflects some aspect of how the nervous system works, we need so much time for the build-up and then, Wham! break things wide open. My second point is, again, a simple one: it is the woman who goes into social exile, not the man. Yes, it is 400 years in the past, but we in the West are still in touch with Shakespeare’s world. On this point, his world is not so different from Valmiki’s rather older world half-way around the globe.

Verbal and Visual Style Now things get more interesting. Paley used different visual styles to present her action. Shakespeare did something like it as well: he used different verbal styles. The verbal combat between Beatrice and Benedick is perhaps the most striking, and liveliest, aspect of Much Ado. Their wordplay is full of double meanings and other witty devices. Here’s their first encounter in the play:

BEATRICE: I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you. BENEDICK: What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living? BEATRICE: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence. BENEDICK: Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none. BEATRICE: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. BENEDICK: God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some gentleman or other shall

'scape a predestinate scratched face. BEATRICE: Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such a face as yours were. BENEDICK: Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher. BEATRICE: A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours. BENEDICK: I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, i' God's name; I have done. BEATRICE: You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.

By contrast, the language of the other high-born principals is noticeably lacking in wit. They speak straight-forwardly. That gives us two verbal styles. The third style is rather hard to describe. It belongs to the play’s commoners. Here, for example, is Dogberry reporting the crimes of the men who enacted Don John’s deception:

Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.

What is most interesting and most curious about Shakespeare’s linguistic stylization is what happens during the interval when Hero is presumed dead. Beatrice and Benedick drop their word games and openly profess their love for one another. And, wouldn’t you know it, the straight-talkers take up wit. Note, for example, how Don Pedro replies to Dogberry after Dogberry has delivered his charges against the miscreants:

First, I ask thee what they have done; thirdly, I ask thee what's their offence; sixth and lastly, why they are committed; and, to conclude, what you lay to their charge.

He replies to Dogberry in his own idiom. Here is an exchange between Claudio, Benedick and Don Pedro. Benedick has been looking for Claudio to avenge Hero’s death (a promise he’d made to Beatrice).

CLAUDIO: We have been up and down to seek thee; for we are high-proof melancholy and would fain have it beaten away. Wilt thou use thy wit? BENEDICK: It is in my scabbard: shall I draw it? DON PEDRO: Dost thou wear thy wit by thy side? CLAUDIO: Never any did so, though very many have been beside their wit. I will bid thee draw, as we do the minstrels; draw, to pleasure us. DON PEDRO: As I am an honest man, he looks pale. Art thou sick, or angry? CLAUDIO: What, courage, man! What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.

BENEDICK: Sir, I shall meet your wit in the career, and you charge it against me. I pray you choose another subject. CLAUDIO: Nay, then, give him another staff: this last was broke cross.

Just as Paley blended her visual styles [2] after the Agni Pariksha, so Shakespeare has blended his verbal styles after Hero died a social death. Each artist has used similar devices in a similar situation. To what end?

One for the Price of Two After the Agni Pariksha Paley moved beyond simply paralleling the lives of Nina and Sita. She moved to blend them. We enter the Agni Pariksha from Nina’s world and exit it into Sita’s. When Sita invokes the gods in her final test, she speaks with Reena Shah’s voice, but through the cartoony body that had previously been associated with Annette Hanshaw. The boundary between the cartoony style and the Indian miniature style has thus collapsed. And when, at the very end, Nina is in bed reading Valmiki, that reaffirms the dissolution of the boundary between her and Sita that took place in the Agni Pariksha segment. I believe that Shakespeare was doing something similar. His two plots are both concerned about the place of sexuality in intimate relationships. Much of the cracking-wise between Beatrice and Benedick is about sexual matters. In the case of Claudio and Hero, suspicion of infidelity derails the nascent relationship. But the relationships themselves are conducted on quite a different basis. Beatrice and Benedick have known one another since before the time the play opened. The interaction between them is the continuation of an ongoing relationship. And that relationship seems to be conducted as equals. Neither defers to the other in their games of wit nor is either a clear victor. This equality, of course, is suspended during the interval where Here is presumed dead, and Beatrice “leans on” Benedick to promise to punish Claudio for what he’s done. But then, all normal relations are suspended during that interval. In contrast, the relationship between Claudio and Hero is quite different. They had no relationship prior to the events in the play. And once Claudio decides upon marriage, he ‘goes through channels,’ using the feudal hierarchy to arrange the marriage. He doesn’t speak directly to Hero on this, nor does she make her acceptance directly to him. The whole business is conducted through intermediaries. In a post over at The Valve [3] I’ve argued that these two styles of relationship – egalitarian (B & B) and hierarchical (C & H) – inhere in human nature. Thus Shakespeare is presenting two aspects of our nature through these two plots and showing that each alone has difficulty in assimilating sexuality to an intimate and affectionate relationship. It is only through their interaction that sexuality and affection can accommodate one another. Within the play that interaction involves two plot-lines. But both of those plot-lines, of course, are experienced by each member of the audience. Just as each member of Paley’s audience experiences the events of Sita’s life as well as Nina’s. The Nina story is very spare, involving just Nina, Dave, and two cats (one at the beginning and a different one at the end). In contrast, Sita’s story is bound with the lives of many others – beyond her husband, Rama, there’s the mother-in-law who schemed to have Rama go into exile, Rama’s father, there’s Ravana, Hanuman, Laxman, Valmiki, Sita’s sons, Dohbi (the launderer) and his wife, and thousands of others (remember, major

battles were fought over Sita). Where Shakespeare was juxtaposing two modes of social interaction in his two plots, Paley is juxtaposing public life (Rama and Sita) and inner life (Nina). Beyond the fact the each member of the audience experiences the whole story, Paley’s two plots are bound together by the three commentators, whose comments apply to Nina as well as Sita (see my previous post [4]) and by the ritual and cosmological patterning that pervades the entire film. Perhaps the most obvious difference between Shakespeare’s multiplicity and Paley’s, after all, is that his two plots are set in the same time and place. Paley’s are not; they are separated by thousand of years. Nina and Sita never interact with one another, nor do Dave and Rama, and so forth. And yet their stories are, in some sense, one story. To make that happen, Paley needed to establish nothing less than a cosmic context for her film. It is to that that we will turn in what I hope is the last post in this series.

References 1. Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 1, New Savanna, 14 July 2010. Accessed 22 July 2010. http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/07/ritual-in-sita-sings-blues-part-1.html 2. The Agni Pariksha in Context, New Savanna, 5 July 2010. Accessed 22 July 2010. http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/07/agni-pariksha-in-context.html 3. Hierarchy and Equality: The Essential Tension in Human Nature, Or: Was Marx Right? The Valve, 29 March 2010. Accessed 22 July 2010. http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/hierarchy_and_equality_the_essential_tension_in_human_nature_or_was_marx_ri/ 4. Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 3b, New Savanna, 20 July 2010. Accessed 22 July 2010. http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/07/ritual-in-sita-sings-blues-part-2b.html

RITUAL IN SITA SINGS THE BLUES, PART 4 – THE WHOLE COSMOS And then some. It’s now time to conclude my remarks on ritual patterns in Sita Sings the Blues. Somehow. Let’s hit the reset button and pretend that I never wrote the first essay in this series, the one where I introduce the anthropological conception of ritual and discuss the cosmological opening and closing of the film. What happens if we simply drop that opening sequence (from the opening to 5:15 and from 77:11 to the end) so that the entire film consists of Sita’s narrative, Nina’s narrative, and the Agni Pariksha. Nothing would seem to be lost from either narrative, but the relationship between the two would be reduced to mere juxtaposition and the Agni Pariksha sequence would be poorly motivated. Remember, that sequence originates from Nina’s life, immediately after Dave dumps her, and takes us back in time into Sita’s life at the point where rumors are being spread about her fidelity. How do we explain that connection? We could, for example, imagine it being accomplished through some kind of time-travel. To do that, however, you would have to set up the time-travel tech by introducing the technology itself and by coming with a reason for it to work in just that way. That is to say, you would have to add something to the film that performs the job that that cosmology now does. So why bother when the cosmology is immanent in the mythological materials?

Cosmology And just how does the cosmology perform that job? Most fundamentally, it establishes Sita as a divine being – she IS a goddess – and so she can be a model for events in the lives of ordinary women, even a woman such as Nina, who is not Indian and who is living in the 20th and 21st centuries CE. It is not simply that Nina Paley, the film-maker, points out a parallel between events in the life of film-Nina and Sita’s life. No, given the cosmological context, the connection between Sita’s life and Nina’s is much more immediate and intimate than that. That film-Nina’s life should track Sita’s life is now inherent in the structure of the cosmos rather than being a correspondence observed by some external person such as film-maker Nina Paley. And given that cosmology, it is natural that the Agni Pariksha should be one and the same event in both Nina’s life and Sita’s. Sita established the pattern and Nina is just one of the many women who have participated in that pattern across historical time and geographical space. In that moment of purification and anguish, all are one. Sounds sorta’ mystical & magical, you say? Yes, it does. But the cosmology is like that. It is all happening, all the time.

Lotsa Stuff Now let’s consider an implication of this cosmology and of Paley’s use of it in the movie. Look at these screen shots, which I took from a discussion the three commentators had about how Rama and Sita got back to Ayodhya (44:19 – 45:03):

We have, from first to last, an ancient horse-drawn cart, a Japanese bullet train, a bird, a carpet, and some kind of flying house. Nor are these the only vehicles mentioned in the commentary. That none of these is a physically plausible mode of transport is, of course, beside the point. What is very much to the point is simply that we have a list of various modes of transport, a list which, by its very oddity, implies all modes of transportation. While Paley could have, in principle, given us an extensive and boring catalogue, she has achieved the same effect with this eclectic list. The effect of the list is to proclaim: ‘These are things if the world; the world is thus.’ That’s not the matter of ordinary narratives, but it is important to cosmological narratives, which are explicitly about the nature of the world. Nor is this the only such listing in the film. At both the beginning and in the Agni Pariksha Paley parades a bunch of hearts before us; many are medical illustrations while many others are jewelry; some seem to be from greeting cards, and one is from the cover of a matchbook. At another point we get lots of jewelry, that Sita dropped behind her when she was abducted to Lanka. And the Agni Pariksha is a parade of deities, dance forms, fabric designs, and other oddments (see Paley’s remarks in the various interviews listed here2). Paley’s collage technique is thus a way of sampling lots and lots of stuff, of laying out a world before us. Her use of distinctive visual styles does something similar, as does the use of various kinds of music on the soundtrack. This stylistic eclecticism is a way of implying a whole and various world of things, people and events. Paley isn’t simply putting her cleverness on display; rather, she’s using that cleverness to show us the world.

Plenitude Now consider these screen shots, taken from the commentators’ discussion of Hanuman and his warriors (32:00 – 32:40):

2 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/p/sita-chronicles.html

We see monkeys and various monkey-human hybrids (notice the tail on the shadow puppet). The discussion is about Hanuman’s nature – monkey? human? some combination? – and so exists in the context of Hindu mythology and philosophy. But I would be remiss if I did not point out that that particular juncture – between monkeys and men – is one that has been deeply contested in the United States for the past century and more. Thus, while the nature of humankind is not in play in the movie, Paley thus does indicate, if only in passing, that there is an issue here. But then we see those Rakshasa demons, and the flying eyeballs, and those many-limbed Hindu deities, strange creatures. Those, taken together with everything else that Paley’s put into Sita Sings the Blues, lead me back to a comment I made after having posted my original review: “Now that that’s written and posted, I’ve been wondering whether or not Paley has, in effect, taken the many-worlds variousness of Fantasia and deployed it in service of a single narrative. Looks like it to me.” And it still does. When I talk of “the many-worlds variousness of Fantasia” I mean that, in Fantasia Disney implied the whole universe.3 Indeed, one episode, “Rite of Spring,” attempted to depict the whole universe, from micro scale to macro scale; another episode depicted the procession of the seasons (“Nutcracker Suite”); another looked at domestic life (“Pastorale”), and so on through episodes dealing with dreams and magic, art, the demonic, the sacred, and the unformed and still-evolving. And each episode is in a different visual style. Well, that’s what Paley does in Sita Sings the Blues, and she tells a story, no, two stories, as well. It is an astonishing and wonderful formal and aesthetic achievement to have created a film that combines and interweaves the narrative with the hieratic, the discursive with the symbolic, and the expository with the poetic. But there we have it: Sita Sings the Blues.

* * * * * 3 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/disneysfantasia_as_master_work/

A final thought: In all this talk about ritual I’ve said nothing about the intermission that Paley plunked down in the middle of the film. What’s it doing? Well, of course, it’s marking time before the big climax of dumpsville and the Agni Pariksha, allowing the viewer to relax from all the various riches they’ve had to track in the story. Now we’ve got over two minutes with the same background and the familiar characters of the story just parading back and forth. There’s really nothing to figure out (except the audience chatter on the soundtrack) or follow, so just relax. Precisely because one can just relax, one is in that way drawn into the film as nothing before has done. If the intermission is part of the film, then so is one’s relaxation within it. This serves to strengthen our sympathy for and empathy with Nina when she appears after the intermission and, through that, our immersion in the Agni Pariksha. We’re being set-up, and it works.

FROM ELIZABETH TO NINA: STICK TO YOUR GUNS, BABY No sooner had Elizabeth I of England ascended to the throne than the House of Commons urged marriage upon her. Here is a portion of the speech she offered in response, her first speech before Parliament, given on 10 February 1559, in her 25th year:

“. . . As concerning instant persuasion of me to marriage, I must tell you I have been ever persuaded that I was born by God to consider and, above all things, do those which appertain unto His glory. And therefore it is that I have made choice of this kind of life, which is most free and agreeable for such human affairs as may tend to His service only. From which, if either the marriages which have been offered me by divers puissant princes or the danger of attempts made against my life could no whit divert me, it is long since I had any joy in the honor of a husband; and this is that I thought, then that I was a private person. But when the public charge of governing the kingdom came upon me, it seemed unto me an inconsiderate folly to draw upon myself the cares which might proceed of marriage. To conclude, I am already bound unto an husband, which is the kingdom of England, and that my suffice you. And this,” quoth she, ”makes me wonder that you forget, yourselves, the pledge of alliance which I have made with my kingdom.” And therewithal, stretching out her hand, she showed them the ring with which she was given in marriage and inaugurated to her kingdom in express and solemn terms. “And reproach me so no more,” quoth she, “that I have no children: for every one of you, and as many as are English, are my children and kinsfolks, of whom, so long as I am not deprived and God shall preserve me, you cannot charge me, without offense, to be destitute.”*

But what, pray tell, has this to do with Nina Paley, who is not a monarch, nor even a monarch-in-waiting, but merely an artist, a cartoonist and film-maker? What has such a royal speech to do with Ms. Paley, who, after all, was once married?

Sita heads for home.

Let’s take another look at Sita Sings the Blues. At the beginning of the film, Nina is married. A bit over halfway through the film her husband dumps her: disaster. What happens then? Well, in principle, and often enough

in Hollywood practice, Nina could meet Mr. Right, fall in love, get married, and move to a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she would birth little sons and daughters of Mr. Hedge-Fund Manager. But that’s not what happens in the film, not at all. What happens is that Nina ends up in bed, with her beloved cat, reading Valmiki’s Ramayana. No husband, no mansion, no babies. From that certain Hollywood POV, that’s No Nuthin.’ But really, do you believe that? I mean, yes, Katherine Hepburn married Cary Grant at the end of Philadelphia Story, but in real life she never married (though she carried on a long-term affair with Spencer Tracy). She had her art, and splendid art it was. That would seem to be where Nina’s headed at the end of Sita Sings the Blues, on the way to making a feature-length cartoon about her life and Sita’s, and then . . . But where I’m really headed is to the cosmological element in Sita Sings the Blues, all the myth and ceremony. Not only does it provide the context which allows Nina’s and Sita’s stories to intermingle, as I’ve previously argued, it also supports and sustains Nina’s decision to become a self-sufficient artist, rather than wife and mom. When she was married, Dave was her link to the world; he WAS her world. Now her art is her link to the world; it IS her world. And the cosmology sustains that link. Not that I’m suggesting that Paley takes that cosmology at face value, that she’s a Hindu. On her Facebook page Paley lists her religious views as “Lapsed Atheist.” Whatever THAT is, it’s not Hinduism, orthodox or heterodox, though perhaps it stretches to paradox. Rather, Paley uses Hindu cosmology as a way of extending her artistic vision to the edges of human experience and to the ends of the cosmos. It is a way of affirming her artistic responsibility to the world. That’s what sustains her and joins** her to the world. Now we can return to young Queen Elizabeth. Her speech was, of course, a political act and, as such, was designed to give her room to act as she felt she must. Elizabeth stated her justification in terms of the cosmology available to her. She served her god, and the nation’s. In terms of that cosmology, she was married to that nation. The nation of England was and is, of course, a real entity, but an entity of an abstract kind. And so it is with the cosmos to which Paley has committed herself. It is real, there really is a universe out there (and also within), but it is abstract in conception and apprehension. She has chosen, as her vocation, to make that cosmos visible, palpable, and comprehendible through means of her craft and artistry.

* * * * * *Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, eds. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. University of Chicago Press: 2000, pp. 58-59. **I offer you this Wikipedia gloss on the word “yoga”:

The Sanskrit word yoga has many meanings, and is derived from the Sanskrit root "yuj", meaning "to control", "to yoke" or "to unite". Translations include "joining", "uniting", "union", "conjunction", and "means". It is also possible that the word yoga derives from "yujir samadhau," which means "contemplation" or "absorption."

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